DINING HIRING CRISIS

Workers aren’t biting

Big Apple restaurants can only serve half their pre-pandemic indoor capacity — and yet they still don’t have enough help to make it work.

Eateries are getting crushed by a shortage of workers both in kitchens and on the floor despite sky-high unemployment and a growing vaccination effort. It’s part of the national hiring crisis in many industries, which The Post’s Lisa Fickenscher reported last week.

“It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen in my 17 years in New York,” said Bernard Collin, a partner in the Upper East Side’s Orsay, La Goulue and Bar Italia.

He blamed much of the labor shortfall on “government assistance where people would rather stay home and pocket their cash.”

Those out of work can receive $805 a week between New York state unemployment benefits and the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation.

The Restaurant Group owner Jeremy Wladis, who oversees new Hachi Maki, Good Enough to Eat and Harvest Kitchen, echoed, “Nobody wants to leave their couch. The American public has gotten so used to doing nothing.”

Others also blame the difficulty in hiring on lingering COVID-19 fears and last year’s exodus from town of employees who previously worked in restaurants to support their now-paused show-business careers.

Stephen Starr, who owns nine Manhattan places including giant Buddakan and Clocktower, said, “We had people leave for places like Lansing, Michigan.”

Nobody’s more aware of the problem than Rick Camac, owner of Tribeca’s Kitchen on Church Street — and also the dean of restaurant and hospitality management at the Institute of Culinary Education.

The situation “is killing us,” he said. He had to close Tribeca’s Kitchen on Monday and Tuesday because “we can’t find enough people to fill a seven-day week.”

Thanks to his longtime involvement in restaurants and his educator’s role, “I’m extremely networked in the business,” he said. But when he recently trolled for a general manager, using his vast contacts to reach out to 250 people, “We got back zero responses,” he said.

Unable to find a suitable host for the three-level eatery, he’s had to place a top manager to man the reception stand — “but then he can’t oversee our three floors,” Camac said.

Mermaid Inn owner Danny Abrams reopened his fish place on Amsterdam Avenue, but due to “trouble finding servers, cooks and bussers,” he’s serving only 70 people outside at a time.

“We could easily do forty more,” he said, but there’s not enough help.